Watermark (22 page)

Auda stared at
René in confusion. Her father had been imprisoned wrongly. He didn’t know he was selling to heretics. But René was shaking his head.

“We’d searched for so long for one such as him, who would help spread our message. Papermakers are rare in this area. And with the rains, we could not get a steady supply from afar to make more books.”

Auda shook her head. What was the man talking about? Her father was no heretic. He only cared for his paper, his folios, not for what was written upon them.

“We went to the Jews,” René explained, “to see where they got their supplies for their school. They sent us to your father. We weren’t sure he was one of us, at first, even when we first approached him. But then he delivered the folios, and we saw his watermark.”

Auda gaped at him. The watermark. Was it really like Tomas had said, a means of communication? A way for heretics to identify one another? She slumped back. This was her fault! She’d bought the watermark for her father. Ignoring
the advice from the stationer against Gypsies, not asking any questions. It was her fault alone.

They installed her in a larger room with a blanket, a pitcher of water, and two small bags of dried fish. It was not safe for them to meet at the same location on a regular schedule and they would not take her along. Trust, it seemed, only went so far.

Yet René stayed with her.

“It will only be for a few days,” he said, “before we find something more permanent.”

He left her to get more food, and news from the city. At first there was none. But on the third day, he returned with a gentle smile.

“Your father’s release is almost bought. He will be home soon.”

She stared at René, willing him to tell her more. Out of habit, she used her hands to speak, though she knew he could not understand her.

Family safe?

“Your sister is beside herself, you know. She doesn’t trust us.” He winked a heavy-lidded eye at her. “Like you, she has much anger in her. She’s demanded, a dozen times over, to see you. In a few weeks, perhaps, when things have quieted, we will arrange it.”

He switched to town matters: the Church had arrested near a dozen more people on the orders of the visiting inquisitor. Auda wanted to ask for details, but he seemed reluctant to linger on the topic. Were his friends among those captured? The public outrage that had erupted with such vehemence
against the inquisitors had now died down. Auda had been right about their fickleness.

“People move about town with eyes firm on the ground and ears closed except to rumors and gossip,” René said. “Like how the crops and grain harvests were low this year, and the fish in the oceans are turning up sick. Twenty, thirty fish in one catch, but they all flop about rotten. People say it is a sign from God.”

He took out a small piece of hard cheese and brown bread from his tattered bag, along with soft pears and a stack of tracts for her to read. “It can be lonely,” he said in an apologetic tone. “I know.”

She raised her eyebrows. Minutes passed like hours here. She’d explored the small amphitheater a dozen times, not just the single circular tunnel underneath the ruins but the paths that led to the surface. Such victories these rocks and dirt must have seen. Bloody defeats also. She tried to compose a verse about it when she came out at night, but no words came to mind.

She rifled through the tracts—they all seemed the same and spoke of the ways of the Friends of God. At first she was ravenous to look at the different watermarks—hearts and crosses and fish atop other patterns. There was no commonality between them. How did heretics know who to approach?

Or were watermarks reserved for heretics alone?

She asked Rene, writing the words out on her tablet and he looked at her with surprise.

“It’s easy to tell who is one of us. All you have to do is look for a path to the heavens. A ladder. A star. In your case, a bridge.”

Auda dropped her head, cheeks burning. She put the tablet aside and asked no more questions.

When René left, she went back to the tracts, studying them.

She observed other details: the smoothness of the paper and the uniform color of the ink on the page, and of course the watermarks. The most common was a dove, although the rough sketch of a unicorn with pointed horn also appeared frequently. There was another with a dove above the Lady Virgin (she thought), and one of a hand with its fingers split into a V, from which a heart emerged. Ladders and stairs abounded.

Auda closed her eyes. At every turn she seemed to step into heresy, dragging her poor father with her.

“Someday I will also take the
consolamentum
,” René said one day in a tone laced with wistfulness and frustration.

“Why?” she wrote.

He seemed surprised. “It’s a simple life, closer to God. In the end of things, He is all we have. Bah,” he said, puffing his cheeks as he looked at the ground. “I want to take my vows this winter. They say I am not ready yet, that I am not yet wise in the ways of the world.”

Auda thought of his simple words, his simple dreams.

What would you sacrifice for this?
she signed to his back. He turned, giving her a sad smile, and she was glad that he could not understand her.

Her gaze fell to the book René was studying, a thick paper tome.

He noticed her interest. “It is the Gospel,” he said in a shy voice. “We are lucky to have a copy.” He held the book close and read aloud.

Auda rose, restless. Perhaps He
was
with them at all times, but for what? To lie, cheat, deceive, and kill? To hurt and be hurt?

What had Jaime told her, that God expected them to live
their lives the best they could? Was the best she could do to hide and let others bear the consequences for her choices?

It became clear, what she had to do.

She left René reading, tiptoeing away until she was outside in the ruins of the theater. Then she broke into a run, leaping over fallen branches and old stones. She headed straight for the city, seeking the first set of church guards she could find. Sighting a trio of red-clothed guards, she threw herself before them and whipped off her wimple. Her bone-white hair swirled around her. She met the eyes of one and bared her teeth.

Someone yelled, another screamed. She felt hands grabbing her around her waist and her shoulders, tossing her to the ground. The ropes stung as they bound her hands behind her back.

They started beating her and then she blacked out.

When Auda regained
consciousness, she found herself slung over the shoulder of one of the guards. She squeezed her eyes against the sun. Her wimple had been taken, her headcap torn. The brightness burned past her eyes straight into her skin. She must be in hell. Nothing so pure and bright could be born of heaven. No, heaven lay in fleeting moments: the warmth of working in the studio on a summer day. Her father’s smile of approval. The scratch of quill on paper. And the feel of her fingers on Jaime’s face.

The townspeople watched as the guards carried her along the river to the prison, past the grand domiciles of both the
vicomte
and the archbishop. Her captor dropped her in front of the keep of Giles Aycelin de Montaigu, named and constructed for an earlier archbishop. With its rough masonry,
battlements, and turrets, this tall building seemed less like a holy place and more like military barracks.

She cried out against the brightness of the sunlight. Only hell could tempt like this, with something so alluring, a light that drew you in until you discovered its flames would incinerate your soul.

Would this be the day she burned in the flames?

The guard prodded her with his club, leading her into a courtyard near the unfinished cathedral. A cool breeze blew the scent of apples and warm bread past her. He herded her on toward a separate tower at the northern corner of the keep, up three sets of stairs. Pushing her into an empty room, he locked the door.

Auda hurried to the window. Through the iron bars, the sun-drenched riverbank beckoned. The colors—the faded green of the grass, the yellowing of leaves still fluttering on their trees, the blues and grays of the river—hurt to see.

The room itself was plain, with a wooden crucifix on the wall, a table with a basin filled with water, two chairs, and a pallet of hay in the corner. She hesitated, then washed her beaten face in the basin. The water darkened with dirt and blood from her skin.

Without a sign, the door opened and the archbishop walked in, dressed in rich finery. He wore all the accessories of his office—a soft white robe trimmed in gold, a matching oval hat, a ruby cross around his neck, rings on his fingers shining with jewels.

Auda breathed in relief to see him, but he seemed not to notice. He grimaced at the basin, and a servant rushed to take away the dirty water, while another brought in a roll of parchment, several quills, a pot of ink, and two cushioned chairs.

The archbishop sat, crossing himself. He mouthed a prayer
and looked up. “There is much to talk about, my child,” he said.

Auda shivered as he smiled and motioned for a clergyman to sit beside him. She stared at him. He sat back and regarded her with soft eyes. Old eyes, blue and fringed with wrinkled skin.

“Will you swear an oath that the answers you give to my questions are the truth?” His voice sounded tired.

Should she trust him? Poncia did. She nodded.

“What do you know of those who call themselves the Good Men and Women?” He said the words offhand, not looking at her as he spoke.

Auda shook her head, her heart thumping.

He glanced at her, lips turned down with reproach. “You should not be afraid to admit it, child,” he said in a voice that was eerily soft.

“We are but mortals, children of God,” the archbishop continued, “who do wrong, stray from goodness. God forgives those who recognize their sins. It’s not you we seek to punish but those who spread their lies without thought for their malice.”

Auda closed her eyes, unable to tell what was the truth anymore. She didn’t care who believed what, hardly remembered what had brought her to this moment. All she knew was the pain in her head and limbs and the ache in her heart bearing her father’s name.

The archbishop templed his fingers. “We will protect you, as far as we can, from the lies that have filled your head. Your punishment will be light; we seek merely to show you the truth. This heresy your father courts is a false truth. Come, child, answer my questions with honesty and you’ll have nothing to fear. Tell me, how long has he known the heretics?”

She snapped back and shook her head. Her father knew no heretics.

“Tell me, then, when was the last time you and your father went to church? Did you go willingly? What was the sermon? Who saw you there?”

She shook her head again, and he frowned.

“Quick, my child, your father’s soul falters. If you don’t answer any of my questions, I must assume you are either dumb as a beast or clever as a fox. Which would you have it be?”

She nodded, again and again. He knew she couldn’t speak. How was she to answer? She was a good daughter of the Church, her father a good son. If he but gave her a chance, she would tell him the truth of it. She mimed the motion of writing.

“Oc, oc,”
the archbishop said. He slid a trimmed section of parchment and an inked quill across the table. “Write for me your confession, and God will forgive you.”

Confession? An image of her father, his face bruised and body broken, stirred in her mind. Yes, God would forgive them all, but who would forgive Him?

Her fingers curled around the quill and she wrote in quick strokes.

The archbishop shook his head in disapproval. “Child, this is no time for deceit. We have proof of your father’s guilt, proof of his heresy. But he tells us nothing, will not repent to save his soul. Help me help him. Who duped him with words of deceit against our Lord? Write down names, and places.”

She gripped the shaft of the quill in a grasp that was too tight. Why would he not believe her? She wrote again.

The archbishop pursed his lips into a tight line. “Don’t test my patience, child,” he said in a louder tone. “I give you a chance many others would not.” He looked her up and down.

She put down her quill. The archbishop narrowed his eyes.

“Pick it up, child, and write. God will guide your words.”

She grasped the shaft of the feather and inked it again, then wrote block letters across the creamy parchment.

The nib broke in the middle of her line.

“Child! If you don’t do it for yourself, at least think of the family you say you love,” the archbishop said, sweeping a hand across the table. The parchment and quill flew to the ground. “They will be next!”

Auda shook her head. Tears fell from her cheeks onto the table.

“I seek to help you and you spit at my feet. Spit upon the feet of God! Is this how you repay your sister for all of her concern?” He pulled a piece of paper from underneath his parchment, a single page folded in three.

Through her tears she couldn’t see what he held. He read aloud:

“‘God is Good. God is the Spirit. God created His Son as an angel, never in body, never on earth. The visible world is all of Satan. To follow Christ unto his Father, we must shake the yoke of flesh and ascend into the Spirit.’”

She blinked. The heretic’s tract she’d saved from her sister? Who had given him that? She brightened for a moment. The
matter was easily cleared then. She could show him the watermark on the tract was not the same as what they used.

Oblivious to her smile, the archbishop kept reading, his tone derisive.

“‘Educated. Rely not on the word of man’s church but on the Church of God as written by Him.’”

Auda scribbled on the parchment.

The archbishop read her words and growled. “Do you think me a fool?” He brandished another stack of papers—her papers with her verse written all over them.

“Silly tales, the lot of them,” he said, “except for this.” He held up a page that bore her writing.

Auda slumped back as if hit. Her words. Her father’s paper. Once it had been their dream. He had been the only one to believe in her. And she had failed him.

“Who taught you this filth?” the archbishop asked in a dangerous tone. “No, no hands, speak his name! Was it a Good Christian who taught you such sins?” Rage throbbed in a vein at his temple. “A Friend of God?” he sneered.

“Nohh.”

He inhaled, once, then again, breathing out of his nostrils. His voice, when he spoke, wavered. “Perhaps you know them by a different name. The Good Men, the
Bonhommes
, the
Parfaits
.
Les Innocents
. No, don’t shake your head.”

He shot a hand out. Cupping her chin, he forced her closer until his face was inches from hers.

“Where did you get this?” he said. “Tell me now and I will have mercy on your sentence. Can you name any people who have previously been hereticated? Have you had relations and intimacy with the heretics Pierre and Jacques, the words of the brothers Authié, or others? Do you worship them, give them comfort, or send them anything whatsoever?”

She could not move in the face of his fury.

He let go of her chin, snatching his fingers back. “You may say the words don’t belong to you. Prove it then. Where and whence did this come from? If you know, you will tell me. Tell me, now! Have you believed and do you believe still that which they told you concerning the Good Christians, concerning the sin of the spirits in the sky and the reincarnation of spirits? No, don’t shrug at me! Write your answer!”

No, no, no. She didn’t need to write to tell him she knew nothing.

His thin lips flattened. “Tell me then, if these words are not your father’s, whose are they?”

Hers. All hers. A certain giddiness took over her. She would tell them the truth, her truth. It would lead nowhere but herself, end nowhere but with her. She wrote a single word on the parchment.

She pointed to her verses.

She picked up the quill again.

She held her head high and looked at him straight on, daring him to disbelieve.